Portugal

It´s Spring Clean time, world-wide thousands of people will clean hundreds of beaches, rivers and lakes. Together they´ll remove staggering amounts of plastics from our tide lines, and if you so wish, you can join them!

You can find the information for the world-wide cleans with Surfrider and for the UK with Surfers Against Sewage. Both have great websites where you can locate the nearest one to you.

Surfrider Europe also have also made a video, with the Beach Boys soundtrack. Who doesn´t love the Beach Boys?!

Back in 2009 We were doing one of many independent beach cleans in the January, when a guy from Germany, Ingo, joined in and told me about Surfriders Ocean Initiative. I signed us up and we were on the official map. Which meant we could add our figures to the data Surfrider collects.

Three of us, Ingo, Pedro and myself, held cleans on three different local beaches on one day.

Getting posters and registration forms ready

Praia do monte Clérigo

Praia do monte Clérigo

Praia da Arrifana

Praia da Arrifana

Praia da Amoreira

Praia do monte Clérigo

We participated every year after. Keeping an open time window so people could come when it was convenient for them (I couldn´t predict the surf and the clean needed to be arranged in advance) anywhere in the region of 60-90 people would come over the course of a day. We´d removed so much plastic year after year.

The year that I´d left, my friend Wiebke arranged one, and plans to do another this Spring, after a big swell.

Beach cleans are fantastic. When the weathers nice it´s a morning, afternoon on the beach. It has the “feel good factor”, time out doors moving plastics, walking away seeing how people have made a difference is a warm feeling. Having a tea, or beer with friends after is lovely (We often used it as an excuse to have bit of a party…!) But there´s a lot more to them that…

Cleaning prevent the plastic returning where it kills. Plastic doesn´t rot, the 100,000s of animals it kills do. Then the plastic goes back on it´s merry way to kill again and again… removing it prevents this from happening. Removing it from a river bank prevents it getting to the ocean in the first place.

In the press this week is the reporting of the Post-Mortem on the 13 stranded North Sea sperm whales finds their stomachs full of plastic. This occurred near the town of Tönning in Schleswig-Holstein (Germany).

Beach cleans educate. People learn about plastic pollution, and the more people who know plastics is in our oceans, and the devastating effect it is having, the more likely they are to make a choice when they are out shopping. Or go on to make other changes, such as Ingo, Pedro, Wiebke and myself.

I had no idea about plastic pollution until I took part in my first clean.

Ingo has since gone on to work with and teach disabled people to make incredible canvas bags. Pedro recently set up One Per Session. A public facebook group which encourage surfers to pick up one piece of plastic after a surf session and document their finds.

Though, from looking at the pictures, it´s not only surfers, and they don´t stop at one piece!

(These are just a few shots from the ever growing collection).

It´s a similar concept to Take 3 a not-for-profit organisation also started by a surfer Tim Silverwood in Australia in 2009 which now has over 15,000 followers on facebook. Small actions, adding up….

So if you fancy getting involved in a clean, here are the details again for Surfrider and Surfers Against Sewage.Or you may want to pick up One Per Session, where you can add your pictureshere. What ever you choose to do….

…Remember; every refusal, and every piece of plastic moved from our water ways – adds up!

Sarah, a friend who owns and runs Arrifana Surf Lodge with her husband Aldo, dropped by with their new daughter Sierra. Sarah looked at the pool in dis-belief.

There was something about seeing the plastic floating in water that put it in to context at what´s happening out in the ocean. Holding her tiny baby in her arms, Sarah felt compelled to do something.

Sierra at a later beach clean

Sarah went home and ordered a water cooler for their guests on the beach. Previously they´d been giving their guests bottles of water in single use plastic – SUPs.

Lessons

They now have two coolers and reusable cups. Which yes, are made from plastic (that´s all Sarah could find at the time) but they have already been going six seasons, and they will be usable for many years to come. They also had a water filter system fitted to their tap.

In this time, Arrifana Surf Lodge have refused around 12,000 single use plastic bottles. Yes 12,000!! How?

Well in a week we would probably have to provide around 50 bottles of water for clients. (an average) That figure is worked out if we have 10 people surfing everyday for 5 days. Obviously out of season we don’t always have 10 but in the Summer we can have up to 20 surfing. So in a year I would say 2000 plastic bottles!! GEEEEZZ that’s a lot!! Over 6 years 12,000 bottles! Scary to think about it like that!!

It´s not just the plastic bottles, but the plastic that wraps them they´ve refused.

What Sarah hasn´t mentioned is the MONEY. Water in Portugal is cheap, when you buy a bottle. What about when you buy 12,000 bottles? A small bottles like this is around 19 cents. Still, 19 cents times 12,000 is 2,280. That is 2, 280 Euros! Even taking the coolers, cups, and water filtration into account, they have still saved around €1,500!! ( the coolers were €50 each, they are still going strong, even after working hard on the beach every day for six seasons. The filter works out €100 a year)

Arrifana Surf Lodge have saved as much money, as they have plastic!

Then there´s the time. Time putting water in a trolly, time getting it out to the car. Time walking it in to the house. It all adds up. There´s better things to do in life than carry water bottles around, I´m sure you´ll agree!

12,000 bottle tops refused. That is a matter of life… or death to Albatross chicks, where in the region of 200,000 chicks die ever year on Midway Island out in the Pacific, bottles tops being an all to common feature in the dead chicks.

photo Chris Jordon

Surf Schools work directly with the oceans. The oceans are their livelihood. Albatross chicks asides, who wants to go on holiday and surf in waves full of plastic? Imagine 12,000 bottles laying on the beach…. Not a pretty sight!

I shot for Surf Schools for a number of years, including Arrifana Surf Lodge. Plastic would wash up at my feet as a daily occurrence. If our rate of plastic consumptions continues like it is, by the time little Sierra is my age, who knows what the oceans will look like? In her short seven years, plastic pollution in the oceans has risen dramatically.

But we CAN change the tide of plastic pollution, by refusing single use plastics. Even if you start with just one product as Arrifana Surf Lodge has. Then it can be easier to change other things, once that´s a habit. One of the frustrating things (one, yes there are a few!) about refusing single use plastic is it often feels futile, but as this clearly shows, over time – it´s NOT. Far from it!

Remember, every refusal adds up. This is a number of refusals Arrifana Surf Lodge should be proud of!